Showing posts with label other ways to make money online. Show all posts
Showing posts with label other ways to make money online. Show all posts

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Free Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising Credits Worth Over $1000

When you make yourself very visible to your target customers you make it easy for them to choose you. Pay-per-click advertising is one of the most popular advertising model on the web that’s effective for all businesses (big or small).
It lets you attract instant targeted traffic to your website and unlike traditional advertising, you pay only when someone actually ‘clicks’ on your ad and ‘visits’ your website.
Some of the most popular pay-per-click advertising networks are Google AdWords, Bing Ads (formerly Microsoft adCenter and MSN adCenter), Facebook Ads, Yahoo Search Marketing (now known as Yahoo Gemini), and Amazon Advertising.
What’s more? It takes just few minutes to setup your first campaign and is super-easy to track the performance of your campaigns. And the best thing about per-per-click advertising is that there’s no minimum spending required, you can start, pause, or stop your ad campaign at any time.
For instance, you can set a daily budget of $5 and maximum cost per click (CPC) of 5 cents. So you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. It’s that simple!

Free Pay-Per-Click Advertising Credits (Quality > Quantity)

Almost all the popular ad networks (Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, Amazon,Yahoo, etc.) offer free advertising credits to new advertisers so that they can kick-start the first pay-per-click ad campaign, risk-free.
So here is a list of the most popular (and best) ad networks that offer a free credit (either as a bonus or as a coupon code or free trial) to new advertisers. Kick-start your first PPC campaign today!

Bing Ads Coupon

Bing Ads
Bing Ads (formerly Microsoft adCenter) is an advertising platform by Microsoft that lets you advertise on the search results of Bing, MSN, Yahoo, and AOL.
Bing now powers almost one-third of U.S. desktop web searches and it’s attracting a monthly searches of over 15 billion across the globe. Plus, it connects you with over 60 million searchers who do not use Google.
The best thing about Bing Ads is that its traffic quality is better than that of Google and yet the cost per click is low. It means your return on investment on Bing Ads could be higher than that of Google AdWords (though the traffic volume can’t be matched in any way).
Microsoft is now offering higher coupon credits to attract more advertisers and the Bing Ads promo code depends upon your location and is different for different countries.
Bing Ads coupon code for the U.S. & Canada is $50, for U.K. it’s £50, for Germany, France, Italy and Spain it’s €50, for India it’s Rs. 1,000, for New Zealand it’s $50 NZD, for Australia it’s $50 AUD, for Brazil it’s R$120, and for Mexico it’s MXN 670.

Note: You don’t have to accrue any advertising charges to avail the free credit — all you need is a valid billing address and a payment method — but your billing address, currency, and the Bing Ads coupon code should match (e.g. U.K. address, GBP currency; UK coupon).

Google AdWords Coupon

Google AdWords
Google AdWords is an advertising program that lets you advertise your website on Google’s search engine results pages and millions of publisher websites on the Google Network.
Google has over 60% global search market share and its AdSense is the most popular affiliate program on the web connecting millions of advertisers and publishers. And that makes Google the preferred (and most popular) online advertising platform.
AdWords supports a variety of advertising models like Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Mille (CPM), Cost Per Action (CPA), Pay Per Call, Retargeting, Shopping Ads, Local Ads, etc. and it lets you create text link ads, banner ads, and rich-media ads.
Google offer free credits worth anywhere between $25 to $100 to new advertisers (and sometimes to existing advertisers as well to retain them).
Google AdWords free credits is available for more countries. You can simply go to your local Google homepage (e.g. www.google.co.jp — for Japan) and add “/adwords/?channel=gdn-ef” at the end of the URL (e.g. www.google.co.jp/adwords/?channel=gdn-ef) and it will show the AdWords coupon credits available for your country.
Note: Google requires you to accrue advertising charges $5–$25 (depending upon the value of the coupon) in order to claim the free credits. If the above coupon codes didn’t work for you or you haven’t received the promotional code by email then you can phone their sales team and they will give you up to $100 free credit (based on your location) to try AdWords.

Yahoo Gemini Coupon

Microsoft and Yahoo have formed a “search alliance” in 2009 to compete with Google. And they created the Yahoo! Bing Network (after renaming Microsoft adCenter to Bing Ads), which was a combined advertising marketplace made up of Yahoo, Bing, and premium partner websites such as Facebook, Amazon, CNBC, Monster, etc.
Later in 2015, the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership was modified, and Yahoo started selling its own ads through its new advertising platform called Yahoo Gemini. That’s not all. Yahoo inked a deal with Google as well to power Yahoo search and show Google ads as well on Yahoo search results.
Basically, it means that Yahoo is now showing ads from Bing Ads, Google AdWords, and Yahoo Gemini on its web properties. However, Yahoo’s native ad inventory is available only via Yahoo Gemini.
Yahoo Gemini
Yahoo Gemini is a self-serve advertising solution that lets you advertise on Yahoo, one of the top destinations on the web with over a billion visits a month.
Yahoo Gemini allows you to buy search ads as well as native advertising and you can manage your ads within a single interface (you can buy search and native ads separately).
Your search ads will appear on Yahoo Search and your native ads will appear on Yahoo.com and its network of websites (including Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Lifestyle, etc.), across desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
  • Free Credits: $50
  • Self-Serve: Yes
  • Initial Deposit: $25
  • Promo Code: YAHOOADS
  • Expiry: Unknown
  • Sign Up: Yahoo Gemini $50 Credit
Note: You need to enter the promotional code when you open a new account and it’s valid for ninety days after activation.

Amazon Ads Coupon

Amazon Sponsored Products
Amazon Sponsored Products lets you reach more shoppers by promoting the products you’re selling on Amazon.com with keyword targeted ads.
It shows relevant ads to targeted shopper searches on Amazon.com, boosting the visibility of your products. And you pay only when a shopper clicks your ad and visits your products/offer page.

LinkedIn Ads Coupon

LinkedIn
Sponsored Content by LinkedIn lets you advertise on the world’s largest professional network (over 450 million users). With Sponsored Content, you can promote your company updates to more users and possibly attract more followers.
You can set targeting options (and of course track conversions) so that you reach only the right audience on all devices (desktop, tablet, and mobile). LinkedIn is offering $50 in free ad credits and it’s applicable only to new advertisers with a limit of one coupon per customer.

Apple Search Ads Coupon

Apple
Search Ads by Apple lets you advertise your app on Apple App Store. With Search Ads, you can place your app on top (depending upon the bidding and ad relevancy) of the regular App Store search results and connect with the searchers directly.
Search Ads follows a cost-per-tap pricing model and it means there’s no minimum spend required and you pay only when a user taps on your ad. Plus, you can set a budget and can start or stop your ads at any time
Since most of the app downloads happens via search it’s the best way to showcase your app to potential customers on the App Store. What’s more? You can try Search Ads for free as Apple is offering a $100 free credit to welcome new advertisers (for a limited time).

Perfect Audience Coupon

Perfect Audience
Perfect Audience is one of the most popular retargeting ad platform that lets advertisers retarget users across the Web, Facebook and Twitter.
That is, you can follow-up with your website visitors (especially those who didn’t take a specific action on your website) by creating a retargeting ad campaign.
You can try Perfect Audience for free as they’re now offering $100 in free ad credits to new advertisers. Once you activate an ad campaign the free credits are valid for only 2 weeks or until you fully redeem it, whichever happens earlier.

Free Pay-Per-Click Advertising Credits (Quantity > Quality)

As you probably know, there are many paid traffic sources on the web from where you can buy targeted traffic to your website. The best thing about online advertising (unlike television, radio, print, etc.) is that it’s totally accountable and you get to know the exact returns of every single dollar that you are spending.
A huge chunk of the online ad spend actually happens on paid search ads (or rather search engine marketing) because of the superior traffic quality (and hence the performance). You can reach 96% of the U.S. searchers by signing up as an advertiser on Google.com (via Google AdWords) and Bing.com (via Bing Ads).
Because Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask.com, and AOL have a combined market share of over 95% in the U.S. search market and they account for almost 99% of the U.S. search ad spend.
However, the problem with the big networks is the increasing advertising costs (or Cost Per Click) and reducing return on investment. Here is a list of pay-per-click ad networks that lets you buy low-cost pay-per-click ads. The traffic quality of the following networks are on the lower side but the bid prices are extremely low.
If all you need is more visibility then it’s worth to try all of them (provided you have enough budget for online ad spending). The idea is to track the results of your individual ad campaigns so that you will be able to scale up/down your ad spend based on what’s working and what’s not.

BidVertiser Coupon

BidVertiser
BidVertiser is an independent pay-per-click advertising network that lets you advertise on their publisher websites.
It’s an alternative to Google AdSense but apparently you can’t expect the kind of traffic quality that you enjoy on Google or Bing as a good percentage of the publishers are the ones who got banned by Google.

7search Coupon

7search
7search is a pay-per-click ad network that places your ad on their search network as well as partner websites across the web.
7search is yet another independent ad network that lets you tap the audience that you can’t reach via Google or Bing.
The top countries for searches are U.S., Canada, U.K, and Australia and the bid prices are significantly lower than that of Google AdWords and Bing Ads.
  • Free Credits: $25–$125
  • Self-Serve: Yes
  • Initial Deposit: $50-$500
  • Expiry: Unknown
  • Sign Up:
Note: The promotional offer or the initial deposit required for each 7search coupon code is different. Please read the offer details mentioned at the end of each offer page. Since there are no expiry dates mentioned on any of the above landing pages it’s a good idea to contact their sales team before signing up.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

I Just Got Banned From Google Adsense! Now What?

I got a really depressing email last week that my Google Adsense account has been shut down!
I received the same message for all of my business accounts as well; I no longer have any access to Google Adsense.  The news fell on me like a ton of bricks, and I’m still a bit dazed and trying to climb out of of the rubble.  To say the least, it hurts…bad!  However, since I have always tried to be as open as possible here on my blog, I felt like I needed to share the news with you.

For those of you unaware,  I have been consistently averaging over $10k a month for the past year or so.  The last REAL income report where I showed my full Google Adsense income was in August 2011, where I had earnings of $13,099.49.  Since that time I have only been sharing partial results about a group of 20 sites I built or my authority site.  Overall though, my income from Google Adsense has continued to be in the six figure annual range, that is until last week.  My income from Google Adsense is now $0.  In fact, the money I earned last month will NOT be sent to me.  Google is “kind” enough to return that to the advertisers.
So, what happened to my sites and where do I go from here?

What Happened?

I got the standard message from Google, which you can read here, but says: “we’ve determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity”.  These are the only details given, no specifics.  Here is the email I received:
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not
accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account
poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a
responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due
to invalid activity, we've found it necessary to disable your AdSense
account. Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will
both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers.

Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the
effectiveness of Google's advertising system, particularly the
advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the inconvenience that
this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and
cooperation.

If you have any questions or concerns about the actions we've taken, how
you can appeal this decision, or invalid activity in general, you can find
more information by visiting
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team
I have of course submitted a reconsideration request, but from what I’ve heard I don’t have high expectations.
My sites receive nearly 100% of their traffic from search engines and I NEVER click on my own ads or ask others to do so.  I’ve been using Google Adsense since 2005 and have never had issues in the past.  So, all I can say is that Google has obviously changed something on their end.  They are getting much more aggressive in closing accounts.  In fact, you have probably heard of lots of other reports of people getting the Google Adsense accounts closed as well.

In fact I have received a few other private emails from people in the past couple of weeks that had their Adsense accounts shut down.
So, it appears I am not alone.  So, this isn’t something I did, but I believe Google is getting MUCH more aggressive about shutting accounts down.  I would suspect that accounts with a high number of domains are at higher risk.  That is the only thing that I can figure; lots of domains probably raises a red flag.

Now What?

Well, it could have been worse.  Even though my primary monetization source is gone, the source of my traffic is not.  All of my sites still rank exactly where they were before in Google.  So, with some experimentation I hope to find some other contextual advertising networks that get me close to where I was with Google Adsense.  It won’t be easy, and to be honest I would be very surprised if my sites earn what they were earning with Google Adsense with any other network.  However, hopefully I’m wrong.
I already have approved accounts (and have for a couple of years) to the following networks:
Kontera
Infolinks
eBay Partner Network
Amazon Associates Program
Chitika
AdBrite
I was also recently set up on Vibrant Media.  I also just applied to the Medianet  advertising program.  In addition, I am approved to a ton of other affiliate networks.
So, there are plenty of options (and MANY more besides what I have listed), but the problem is that most of these don’t pay as well as Google Adsense.  Google just has such a large pool of advertisers when compared to these other networks; therefore, there is more advertising dollars being spent on Google as these companies compete for placement on your site.
So, I fully expect to get back some of the income, but its going to take some time.  After all, I have over 200 sites and it won’t be an easy task finding the best advertising fit for each site.  Some will do okay with Amazon, but most won’t.  Infolinks and Kontera are a quicker and easier general in-content ad solution for information sites – so I may rely heavily on these to start.  However, I have a lot of testing to do in the coming months…not fun.

Will I Ever Use Google Adsense Again?

I can personally never have an Adsense account under my name according to Google. Technically, I could form a new legal entity and open a new business account and make sure there is no linking information to any of my banned Adsense Accounts, and the new business entity can re-apply to Google Adsense.  However, I’m not sure I want to go down that road.  The wound is too fresh right now, so I need to take some time to think about it.  Even if I somehow got a new adsense account, I would always be in fear of the same thing happening again.  There is definitely going to be a shift in my business.
You see, I have specialized in more informational types of sites that are best monetized with Google Adsense.  Because they have such a broad advertising network, I could (and I have) build sites on Worm Farms, Buffalo Nickels, or Oil Change Coupons, and made good money.  However, those keywords could NEVER be monetized well with Amazon Associates or many other networks.
So, while I was using Google Adsense I could really use my skill of finding low competition keywords – because there were SO MANY to choose from.  If I don’t use Adsense, my pool of keyword choices is going to limited greatly.  At least that’s how I see it now.  Who knows though, maybe some of these other ad networks will surprise me.

Should I Still Build Micro Niche Sites?

I don’t know.  Its too early to say where I am going to take my business.  If any of these other ad networks are anywhere close to what Google Adsense was able to pay out, then I will likely still dabble in building small niche sites. I’m not saying I’m giving up on niche sites by any stretch of the imagination.  I’m just saying that I’m considering all options; including building larger sites, building lots of small affiliate sites, or other strategies.
However, as I wrote about a few months ago; I’ve always known that a better strategy is to build a larger site that you are in love with and provide unique tools or other value to the end user.
So going forward, I am going to be considering additional ideas on large niche sites (1 or 2 maybe) that I can just keep and build for years to come.  I already have one site that is only a few months old that I think has a lot of potential.  Its only getting 150 uniques or so a day, but I think it has potential for 100 times that easy and maybe more.
I don’t know if I have the personality to do that honestly, but this is probably the best strategy for many of you out there. So, I will most likely continue to build small niche sites and grow the winners into something bigger.  I just might have to find other niches and other means of monetizing.

Doesn’t This Change Everything?

Yes and No.  As mentioned, as I try different revenue models, I may find something that works nearly as well as Google Adsense.  However, the skill that I have been able to master is keyword research, and that has always been the core of this business.  There is no reason why I can use this same skill of keyword research and simply apply it to either a larger site strategy or use different ad/affiliate networks.
I wrote about the risks of building niche sites about 9 months ago. (Getting your Adsense account banned was #3).  So, I have always been VERY aware of all the risks involved, but I stuck it out because I know ALL businesses have risks.
Luckily, for the most part, the things I have taught on this site remain unchanged.  The keyword research tactics I teach are still valid as is nearly everything else on the Niche Websites Hub.  The difference is that instead of using Google Adsense, I’ll need to find something else.  However the basic process of: finding a good niche keyword, building a site, and ranking that site remains unchanged.
Of course, this also just makes me think longer term about the viability of micro niche sites (without Google Adsense) and the types of sites I should build in the future.  This will be an ongoing consideration.  Perhaps you should look twice at your own business as well.
Overall, I really like the attitude that Eric Gati had when his Adsense Account was disabled recently.  He feels like he will be able to look back on the experience as one of the best things that could happen to his online business.  Perhaps I will feel same in the future.



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